1. Field of Disclosure
Aspects and embodiments disclosed herein relate generally to methods and systems for monitoring and controlling airflow in an environment.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Centralized data centers for computer, communications, and other electronic equipment have been in use for a number of years, and more recently with the increasing use of the Internet, large scale data centers that provide hosting services for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Application Service Providers (ASPSs), and Internet content providers are becoming more prevalent. Typical centralized data centers contain numerous racks of equipment that require power, cooling, and connections to external communications facilities. In modern data centers and network rooms, the increased density of computing equipment used in these facilities has put strains on the cooling and power systems of the facilities. In the past, typical power consumption for each equipment enclosure in a data facility was on the order of 1 kW. With the use of server blades and other high power density equipment in equipment racks, it is not uncommon for an equipment rack to have a power draw of 10 kW or even as high as 25 kW.
The power consumed by computer equipment is converted to heat and typically the cooling requirements of a facility are determined based on the power requirements of the facility. In some embodiments, air is circulated through equipment racks housing the computer equipment and may be directed into a warm or hot aisle defined by rows of the equipment racks. Heated air may be withdrawn from the warm or hot aisle, cooled, and returned to a cold aisle defined by the rows of equipment racks on the opposite side of the equipment racks from the warm or hot aisles for recirculation through the equipment racks. The warm or hot aisle is often separated from the cold aisle by the equipment racks, walls of the data center, and/or other containment structures.
Some data centers utilize air plenums under raised floors to distribute cooling air through a data center. One or more computer room air conditioners (CRACs) or computer room air handlers (CRAHs) are distributed along the periphery of the data room, and these units draw return air from the room or a ceiling plenum and distribute cooling air beneath the raised floor. Perforated tiles may be placed in front or beneath racks of equipment to be cooled to allow the cooling air from beneath the floor to cool equipment within the racks.
Other data centers may include cooling units integrated in the rows of equipment racks or located outside of the room housing the equipment racks and computer equipment. Structures other than raised floors, for example, ceiling plenums, open spaces between rows of equipment racks, and/or other air flow conduits may be provided for the circulation of air through a data center for cooling computer equipment contained in the data center.
Several tools are available to assist a data center designer in configuring a layout of a data center to provide necessary power and cooling to equipment to be located in the data center. These tools typically assist a designer in determining total power requirements and accordingly overall cooling requirements for a data center. In addition, these tools may assist a designer in determining optimum equipment layout and proper sizing of power cabling and circuit breakers.
Such tools often fail to account for situations which often occur in real life installations, which can dramatically affect the cooling performance of a data center. For example, in a facility using a raised floor, the absence of one or more floor panels, or the misplacement of one or more perforated floor panels can greatly affect the cooling performance of the data center and cause the actual performance to vary greatly from a calculated idealized performance. Further, the degradation in performance of one or more air conditioning units can drastically change airflow and cooling characteristics of a facility.
The inability to properly analyze the cooling performance of a facility can cause a data center designer to over design the facility from a cooling perspective, which results in the facility being more expensive and less efficient than necessary.